When Google first launched AdWords back in October 2000, it was a simpler time for online marketing. In fact, there were only 350 advertisers, no CPC pricing, no AdSense, no YouTube video advertising, and certainly no mobile integration. Fast forward almost 18 years, and marketers have never had more opportunities to reach the buying public across various formats and channels.
As the online consumer landscape has become more complex, so has Google Ads evolved to meet new needs, demands, and opportunities. And last week, Google unveiled the latest – and perhaps most significant – development to their advertising services: Google AdWords is now Google Ads working in conjunction with Google Marketing Platform and Google Ad Manager.
Google intends for this latest development to make buying and selling easier for both businesses and consumers. According to Google’s Senior Vice President of Ads and Commerce, “These new brands will help advertisers and publishers of all sizes choose the right solutions for their businesses, making it even easier for them to deliver valuable, trustworthy ads and the right experiences for consumers across devices and channels.”[1]
Introducing Google Ads
The new Google Ads will work to integrate experiences across all the Google properties, partner sites, and mobile apps. In this new incarnation, marketers will be able to reach consumers whether they’re Googling answers to questions, searching for videos on YouTube, seeking new mobile experiences on Google Play, browsing online content, or discovering new local opportunities using Google Maps. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Google Ads will also feature a new campaign type dedicated to small businesses that will help remove any barriers to entry and make it easy to incorporate online advertising into their overall marketing plans. More new campaign types will be announced at Google Marketing Live on July 10 – you can sign up to watch the live-stream here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/gml2018-livestream/?utm_source=the-keyword&utm_medium=et&utm_campaign=new-advertising-brands
Introducing Google Marketing Platform
The new Google Marketing Platform brand will unite Google Analytics 360 with Google’s DoubleClick advertiser products. This move is in response to feedback from marketers about the benefits of using analytics and advertising technology together to better understand consumer activity. Google intends for the new marketing platform to help advertisers both measure and optimize their digital media offering to provide for improved customer experiences, including more customer control over how their data is being collected and used. You can find out more on the Google Marketing Platform Blog at https://www.blog.google/products/marketingplatform/360/introducing-google-marketing-platform/
Double Click Search will now be Search Ads 360, the service that helps marketers buy and measure search campaigns. It will work in conjunction with Display & Video 360, which will allow marketers to execute ad campaigns all in one place, combining features from DoubleClick Bid Manager, Campaign Manager, Studio and Audience Center. More details, including a demo of Display & Video 360, will also be included in the July 10 keynote event at Google Marketing Live.
Introducing Google Ad Manager
The new Google Ad Manager finally brings together DoubleClick for Publishers and DoubleClick Ad Exchange in one unified platform. As automation continues to change the way business is done, advertisers have been seeking more programmatic solutions. With Google Ad manager, businesses will be able to determine who has access to their inventory alongside programmatic demand, in order to optimize relationships with partners.
Introducing More Transparency and Customer Control
As businesses are becoming savvier in their utilization of online marketing, customers are becoming savvier too, demanding more transparency and control over how their data is being used. The new Google Ads, Google Marketing Platform, and Google Ad Manager brands promise to serve both businesses and consumers in an increasingly complex online marketplace.
Long-time experts in online marketing see the promise in this most recent stage of the evolution. For example, Menachem Ani, the Founder and CEO of JXT Group, a Google Premier Partner Agency, remarks “These branding changes are really just a reflection of how the digital advertising industry has evolved over the years. The Google Ads platform has become a lot more sophisticated and supports so much more than just words, compared to where it originally started 18 years ago.”
[1] https://www.blog.google/technology/ads/new-advertising-brands/
